


Wasteland

by TheAzureFox



Series: In which Akira isn't a good brother [2]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Akira is still not a good person, Aoi snaps, Attempted Murder, F/M, Kusanagi is good, Part 2, Yusaku suffers, and strangulation, i swear my next fanfic will be lighter, is actually good, now that I know Akira
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-04 01:57:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10979994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAzureFox/pseuds/TheAzureFox
Summary: “I so desperately wanted to love you,” Aoi says, tilting her head down towards him. Blood stained fingers reach for Yusaku's throat. “But I couldn’t, not when you chose everyone else over me.”(Major Canon Divergence. Akira is an neglectful asshole, Aoi is a sociopath and Yusaku is the problem child)





	Wasteland

A bead of sweat rolls down his neck.

Crystal blue. Eyes of icy lapis glare down upon him. Yusaku wipes at his mouth, at the blood running down his chin, and glares up at the girl above him.

“Why?” he asks.

She kicks at him and he rolls away just in time, avoiding what might have otherwise been a brutal injury to his VR form. His body flickers with pixels, the pain from the false world attaching itself to the part of him that exists in the real world. He spits more blood onto the ground and stands to his feet, body shaking with adrenaline.

The girl before him is a feral creature. She is no longer the cutesy actor who’d dazzled him with her charms. Rather, she is something more akin to an animal, black shadows covering her face with a vicious grin spread about her face like that of a demented mask. Sheer insanity gleams in her eyes, a kind of maniacal glee evident as she lashes out at him with every chance she gets.

“Do I need a reason?” she purrs, her voice so sweet and loving and yet the most threatening thing he has ever come to hear.

“I’d like to hear one,” he replies softly. “Please, Aoi-!”

“ _That’s not my name!_ ” she snarls, lunging for him. Her hands clench around the area where his throat would be and she snaps her head to the right to watch as he ducks away from her.

“Fine, _Blue Angel_ ,” he says, watching as she steps towards him, “I want to understand. I want to understand _you_. We’re partners. There has to be a reason…!”

He rolls away from another kick and feels a rock stab into his shoulder. Yusaku winces and then gets to his feet yet again.

“We’re not partners anymore, _Playmaker_.” There’s a subtle hiss of disapproval at his VR name. “You proved that when you abandoned me at SOL.”

He glares up at her. “I didn’t abandon you.”

“Say it again for the audience in the back?” she scoffs, her lips pulling back to reveal a flash of teeth. “Say it again to _me_ , you _asshole_.”

He levels his gaze with hers. “I didn’t abandon you. I had to save Kusanagi. He was in danger and you were going to be fine regardless of whether I was there or not.”

There’s a flash of something in her eyes, a kind of emotion that makes her lips pull into a grimace. “That didn’t stop you from repeating it every time since. Every time, _every time_ , you choose someone else over me. You even chose _Ema_ , of all people,” Blue Angel spits at the ground. “And, always, it’s the same story. And the one time I need you, the one time I wanted you by my side, you were gone. Disappeared. Vanished. _You fucking traitor._ ”

Yusaku flinches, recalling to mind a certain period of time in which he had up and abandoned everyone. It had a been a shameful decision, one made from the regrets of his heart, but he’d never realized the extent to which it might have affected her. “Did he…?”

Her eyes widen and then narrow in quite a dangerous manner. “You bet,” she spits. “As soon as he figures out my identity he figures he’ll use me as bait for _you._ Because, of course, if the pretty little princess is held in the tower then my brother’s nemesis will come prancing in, _right?_ My brother doesn’t even care about me. _You_ don’t care about me. I would have been left rotting there forever if I’d even dared hope that you’d come back for me.”

She begins to move circle him and he mirrors the movement, legs dragging and eyes losing their luster. He’s losing too much blood. _Damn._ He hadn’t expected to be badly hurt by Blue Angel.

Then again, he hadn’t expected to be ambushed either by the girl he’d considered his friend either.

Irony in its purest form.

“That’s not true,” he says to her, nearly pleading.

Her eyes flash with indignation. “Oh really? Why not?” she inquires lightly.

_Too lightly._

She dives forward, her corrupted, pixelated wings emerging to let her glide off the ground. He tries to call upon his own hoverboard to float away but the item refuses to appear, vanquished by the virus that has slowly eaten away the rest of the VR world. Blue Angel’s nails scrape his cheek and he hisses, recoiling back as red seeps down.

He moves too slowly and she pins him down, the heel of her shoes keeping him in place. He watches her with glazed eyes, a kind of anticipation settling over him. She’s going to kill him. There’s no doubt in his mind. Her hatred runs that deep, deep enough to bloody her hands and send her falling down to Hell.

“It’s your fault, you know,” she says, softly. He almost doesn’t hear her.

“How?”

“You caused this. You made me choose between my brother and you. I chose _you_. I chose you over and over and my brother...my brother…!” She looks close to crying, her eyes glistening. “My brother, who I so desperately wanted to love me, despised me. He used me to get to _you_ because only _you_ mattered. Because it was never about me - it was _never_ _going_ to be about _me_. _I_ wanted his attention, _I_ wanted to be appreciated, _I_ wanted to be his _sister_ not his rival’s _bait_ and _you_ made that happen. I lost any chance I had of impressing him the moment I chose _you_ , Yusaku.”

He winces at the mention of his real world name but offers no protest. The heel of her shoe digs in deeper and he represses the urge to scream.

Blue Angel - Aoi Zaizen - continues. Her face becomes shadowed, her words menacing. “I wanted to be someone. I became the Blue Angel to become famous, to become someone my brother could respect. And, somewhere along the line, that meant choosing you against him - you against what _I’d so desperately wanted since day one_. And, just like my brother, you betrayed me.”

Her eyes return on her face and Yusaku’s breath is stolen. They’re unnatural, wild, feral, brimming with the depths of insanity, but they are also tinged with tears, pale cheeks enhanced with red.

There’s a pause of merciful silence.

“I so desperately wanted to love you,” she says, tilting her head down towards him. Blood stained fingers reach for his throat. “But I couldn’t, not when you chose everyone else over me.”

Yusaku watches her, silent. He can’t react, can’t move. He wants to raise a hand, to push her off and to keep her far, far away from him but he is held into place by his own stupid will.

Then, her eyes widen and she pauses, mouth opening in a kind of gape. There is a flash of fury, a sudden unbridled rage deeper than he can understand…and then she slumps down on top of him. Yusaku, dumbfounded, looks between her and the limited view of his environment.

Kusanagi jogs up to him, settling a gun down and prying the girl off of him.

“Who would have known,” he says, helping Yusaku to a sitting position, “that tranquilizer rifles can work in the VR world too?”

Yusaku stares blankly at him. “I don’t know,” he responds, shaking.

The man flits his gaze down to the body of Blue Angel. His gaze softens with pity. “It’s too bad,” he says, words cautious as he watches the boy in front of him. “Had she known…”

He trails off and Yusaku finishes his words in his mind... _that I loved her too, would she have done this to me?_

“I don’t know,” he repeats, fingers combing through his hair. “I didn’t...I couldn’t...I know we’re messed up and we’ve been through a lot and that, even so, we’re supposed to be _good people_ but…but I don’t know if that’s possible any more.”

Kusanagi hugs him with a kind of desperation that speaks words. Once again, it’s just the two of them. Once again, it’s them against the world and against the people they’d once trusted.

The man removes himself, grabbing his rifle and standing to his feet. Yusaku follows his lead, regaining some of his composure. He’s still shaking, his hands nervously shivering by his side, and he looks at the girl he’d once called friend.

She’s the spitting image of a fallen angel, face twisted in despair and hatred as she rests on the grounds of hell. Yusaku’s tempted to fix her position, to change her posture until she looks like she is peacefully at rest and not outright furious at the world that has betrayed her. Instead, he turns away, following Kusanagi as the world beneath him flickers with black pixels and dark distortions.

He looks at his Duel Disk, at the memories that gleam across its cracked surface, and continues walking.

Once, long ago, he had been a boy who had despised Dueling, a boy who had refused to accept the world because it had rejected him.

Now he was just a scared kid who only wanted to return to the days when Dueling with his friends hadn’t resulted in bloodshed and a VR bomb.

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate bad end number 2 in which Aoi turns against Yusaku out of grief for picking Yusaku and still not winning either with her brother or with him. Consider this the path Aoi would have gone through had she not told her brother Playmaker's identity in part 1 of this series.
> 
> I honestly cannot give this girl a break, can I? Personally, I think my other fanfic was better well-written but then this one was technically written before that one and...well...I'm still not as fond of it as I was with Make A Choice.
> 
> The next fanfiction will be more light-hearted I swear. Now that I know Akira's apparently a good (but still sort of neglectful) brother I think my next fanfic will take a more fluffy turn rather than an angsty one.


End file.
